When creating a computer application, a developer typically may chose a particular environment, or platform on which the application will ultimately be executed. For example, when writing an application, the developer may choose to develop the application to run on the Microsoft Windows® platform. As a result, the program developer may have different options available for defining how user interface objects will look during interactions with a user of the application.
An application developer may program the application with user interface elements provided by the platform or may create customized user interface elements by defining aspects of their appearance such as background color, font size, border thickness, and so forth, so that the chosen platform may render the display as intended by the application developer. Although functional, this process suffers certain drawbacks. For instance, in order to customize a user interface object for a particular system, a developer may be required to explicitly specify the property values for how each user interface object will be displayed. This may become a cumbersome and repetitive process since the customized style may only apply to one user interface object and the process of customizing the style for other user interface objects may need to be repeated for each user interface object.
What is needed is a way for an application developer to customize the style of any type of user interface object and more easily define how the user interface object will look during interactions with a user of the application. Moreover, such a system and method should allow a developer to define a customized style for displaying a user interface element only once so that the customized style may also be used for displaying other user interface objects.